This paper addresses how the introduction of welfare technologies in Denmark makes the body- work of eldercare an object of public governance, and investigates how wash-and-dry toilets co-constitute professional care work. First, a theoretical frame is established for studying care, with an emphasis on bodywork as a sociomaterial and collective accomplishment. The paper then unfolds the great expectations tied to welfare technologies in general, and wash-and-dry toilets specifically. Turning to differentiated examples of situated uses of the toilets, the complexity of making the toilets work within the context of professional eldercare is illustrated. Some of the uses of the toilets in care work are in concordance with policy expectations. Other uses demonstrate difficulties in satisfying the great expectations and call for a more complex understanding of what it takes to achieve dignified, technologically assisted care without silencing the skills and profes- sionalism of care workers.

Based on an ethnographic study in a Danish residential care center, this article shows how the interplay of a sensor-floor technology and currently influential values of person-centeredness, privacy, and security in care transforms care work and care interactions between residents and care workers. Based on an understanding of care as realized in a heterogeneous collective of human and nonhuman actors, this article illustrates how new modes of monitoring and interpreting residents’ care needs at a distance arise, and how a new organization of work focusing on quick and responsive care is established. These new care practices lead to conflicts between the values of privacy and security, to ambivalent experiences among care workers of simultaneously increased security and insecurity in work, and, paradoxically, also often to a decentering rather than person-centering of care. Instead of accommodating simultaneous compliance to the values of privacy, security, and person-centeredness, the use of the sensor-floors makes the tensions between these values continuously and loudly present in daily care practices.

Over the last 30 years, the concept of control has had a central position in research into the psychological working environment. Control has been understood as individual autonomy and individual opportunities for development. This article examines whether the concept of control has the same key significance in the modern workplace which is simultaneously characterized by self-management and standardization. It is concluded that the concept of control remains important, but needs to evolve from its focus on the work of individuals to a focus on the associational aspects of work if it is to retain its critical potential. This conclusion is supported by case studies of four Danish banks.

Through a qualitative interview analysis of a document handling department in a Danish bank, this article seeks to illuminate central aspects of how some jobs come to be seen as naturally female. Taking gendered organizational theory and Joan Acker’s concept of an ideal employee as our point of departure, we ask whether women are seen as the ideal employees in this femaledominated job function or as a residual to men as the actual ideal employees. The numerical female dominance in the document handling department is articulated as a matter of competencies, job content, and family obligations – for example, by framing women as good at multitasking, as enjoying routine work, and as primary caregivers. The article argues that this construction both draws on and alters historically formed stereotypes in ways that reinforce the gender segregation of the organization and make it hard to change.

Velfærdsteknologier er i de sidste 10 år blevet et centralt element i digitaliseringen af den offentlige sektor. Velfærdsteknologier virker helt ude hos borgerne og er med til at skabe nye roller og relationer for borgere og professionelle. Denne udvikling er med til at forandre arbejdet i ældreplejen, hvor forskellige velfærdsteknologier – som hér virtuel hjemmepleje, sensorgulve og skylle/tørretoiletter – understøtter de professionelles tilbagetrækning fra borgerens private sfære, samtidig med at de skal muliggøre professionel ansvarstagen på højt niveau. Det medfører dilemmaer og paradokser i udøvelsen af professionelt ansvar på afstand samt nye risici og usikkerheder som de professionelle må håndtere.